Getty Museum Recent Acquisitions
Vexed Man and Vita Christi Join Sculpture and Manuscript Collections
"The Vexed Man" by German sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt and the early English "Vita Christi" are recent additions to the J. Paul Getty Museum's collections.
The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California recently acquired two works of art that will enhance its sculpture and manuscript collections: The Vexed Man (after 1770) by German artist Franz Xaver Messerschmidt (1736-1783) and the Vita Christi, an early English volume consisting of 12th- and 15th-century illuminations.
Franz Xaver Messersschmidt and The Vexed Man
Trained during the late Baroque period, German artist Franz Xaver Messersschmidt was one of the most important sculptors of the Viennese Enlightenment. A member of the Akademie since 1769, he was highly regarded by his public and royal patrons. But symptoms of mental illness led to a decline in the number of his commissions and dismissal from the Akademie. Messerschmidt eventually relocated to Pressburg, where he concentrated on formal portraiture and a series of 69 Character Heads, The Vexed Man belonging to this group.
Messerschmidt was a master of pathognomy, the study of passions and emotions as expressed by the human voice, gestures and the face. His early Neoclassical Character Heads, a few carved in alabaster and many cast in lead or a tin alloy, are astonishing examples of Messerschmidt's remarkable powers of observation. Recent scholarship indicates that the alabaster Vexed Man and its companion pieces were the artist's personal studies and not intended for public viewing. It's been suggested that the heads were also cathartic in nature, a means by which Messerschmidt could purge himself of the demons that haunted him later in life. Purchased from the artist's brother after his death by a certain Herr Stranz, the cook of Vienna's Citizen's Hospital, 49 of the heads were exhibited in 1793. The anonymous author of the presentation's catalogue named the twenty-first head The Vexed Man.
In a private collection since the 19th Century, The Vexed Man will temporarily be on view in the Getty Museum's terracotta gallery until its appearance in a reinstalled sculpture display.
The Vita Christi
The illuminations of the English Romanesque Vita Christi are divided into two distinct cycles. The 51 full-page painted miniatures dating from the late 12th Century probably served as elaborate illustrations for the preface of a psalter, a volume that contained the Old Testament Book of Psalms and other devotional texts. These northern English images primarily describe the life of Christ, although they begin with Joachim and Anna, the Virgin Mary's parents, and end with their daughter's death. Biblical narratives rarely depicted in medieval art appear in the pages, including the 12-year-old Christ Led by His Parents to Jerusalem, King Herod's Suicide and The Road to Emmaus (all ca. 1190-1200).
In 15th-century East Anglia, 57 more miniatures were integrated into the reconfigured book. They represent the Biblical account of the world's history, from the Fall of the Rebel Angels, the Creation and Noah's Ark (ca. 1480-1490) to the Apocalypse. Included with these images are a number of prayers, among them those dedicated to the Holy Face and Christ's wound, the latter accompanied by a life-size illustration of the gash.
The Vita Christi, previously in private collections, will make its public debut in Imagining Christ, an upcoming special exhibition at the Getty Museum (May 6-July 27, 2008).
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